Product Description
Palmares hails the return of a major voice in literature - 'the best American novelist whose name you may not know' (Atlantic). Gayl Jones was first discovered and edited by Toni Morrison, and her talent was praised by writers including Maya Angelou, James Baldwin and John Updike. After a handful of acclaimed novels, she withdrew from the publishing world. Now Jones returns with her first new novel in over two decades.AN EPIC TALE OF LOVE AND LIBERATION SET IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY COLONIAL BRAZILFrom plantation to plantation, Almeyda, a young slave girl, hears whispers, rumours of Palmares, a hidden settlement where fugitive slaves live free. But can this promised land exist? And what price is paid for 'freedom'?In Palmares, Gayl Jones brings to life a world full of unforgettable characters, reimagining extraordinary historical events and combining them with mythology and magic. The result is a sweeping saga spanning a quarter of a century. Of Gayl Jones, the New Yorker noted, '[Her] great achievement is to reckon with both history and interiority, and to collapse the boundary between them.' Like nothing else before it, Palmares embodies this gift.
Review
Palmares reinvents 17th-century Black Brazil in all its multiplicity, beauty, humanity and chaos. It is a once-in-a-lifetime work of literature, the kind that changes your understanding of the world -- Yara Rodrigues Fowler ―
Guardian
Palmares enfolds the reader in a bygone world, with a glance to our own, and has a great whispering lushness that is both magical and panoramic -- Diana Evans, author of ORDINARY PEOPLE
A literary giant, and one of my absolute favourite writers -- Tayari Jones, author of AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE
Tremendous. A masterfully absorbing, mythic work from a vital voice. The gods have conspired to gift us a new book from Gayl Jones and my what a gloriously eddying read -- Irenosen Okojie, author of NUDIBRANCH
Jones reemerges after a 21-year hiatus with an epic and inventive saga that weaves together magic, mythology, and Portuguese colonial history . . . Jones brings her established incisiveness and linguistic flair to the horrifyingly accurate portrayal of racial struggle . . . it's a triumphant return ―
Publisher's Weekly
Gayl Jones conjures with deep intimacy and immediacy a brutal world that is centuries past but fully alive with spirit and mystery. Page after breathtaking page, her prose is intricate, mesmerizing, and endlessly inventive and subversive.
Palmares is absolutely stunning! -- Deesha Philyaw, author of THE SECRET LIVES OF CHURCH LADIES
Set in the17th century,
Palmares is a sprawling, ambitious tale of racial struggle, Portuguese colonial rule, magical realism & mythology . . . a sublime feat of imagination -- Martin Chilton ―
Independent
Palmares, Jones' long-awaited fifth novel, is a blistering return to form worth the two decade wait ... Gorgeously suffused with mystery, history, and magic,
Palmares is a remarkable new outing from a major voice in American letters -- Adrienne Westenfeld ―
Esquire
Palmares is an odyssey, one woman's search first for a place, and then for a person . . . a story woven with extraordinary complexity, depth and skill; in many ways: holy . . . [it] is the first of five new works by Gayl Jones to come in the next two years. After suffering the author's absence for far too long, we - the witnesses longing for texts like hers, the borderline sacred - can rejoice at her return -- Robert Jones Jr. ―
New York Times
I can't tell you the last time I picked up a book and was struck dumb by the sheer beauty of its prose, and the enormity of what I don't know, but I'm here to tell you
Palmares is that book -- Sam Baker ―
Noon Magazine
A legendary African American novelist returns with her first novel in 22 years, an epic adventure of enchantment, enslavement, and the pursuit of knowledge in 17th-century Brazil . . . Those familiar with
Corregidora (1975) and
Eva's Man (1976
